Election-year politics is threatening one of the least heralded but most successful federal laws passed in recent years--the Violence Against Women Act. In 1994, just before the Republican "revolution," VAWA squeaked through Congress. Since passage, it has been one of the few social services funding programs to enjoy bipartisan support. But now, thanks to slick maneuvers by a few Congressional Republicans, VAWA is in trouble.

Before 1994 there was no federal legislation addressing the problem of domestic violence. Exact figures are difficult to come by, but in 1993, 1.1 million women reported that they had experienced violent offenses at the hands of an intimate. Interstate enforcement of orders of protection was virtually unheard of, and many states had just one shelter for battered women and their children. Congress responded to this crisis by passing VAWA, which allocates federal dollars for sorely needed domestic violence shelters, anti-domestic-violence education campaigns, a national hotline, legal services and training programs for police and prosecutors on domestic violence issues. In short, VAWA initiated a revolution in services to victims.

By giving states money and incentives, VAWA has forced substantial changes in the way police and prosecutors respond to domestic violence. When I worked at Mississippi Legal Services before VAWA, I interviewed police to find out if they had any special programs for domestic violence victims. Not a single department did, although one sheriff volunteered that he always took into account the differences between blacks and whites in such cases--black families are used to violence, he said.

Police and prosecutors now have a tougher time getting away with attitudes like that. In New York City, for example, there have been significant developments, directly and indirectly generated by VAWA. Over the past five years, a domestic violence officer has been installed in every New York police precinct. The Brooklyn district attorney received almost $1 million in VAWA money to develop a coordinated boroughwide response to domestic violence. And the Queens district attorney just announced that a domestic violence bureau is being developed with VAWA funds to insure that all prosecutors dealing with these cases have received special training.

In total, VAWA allocated $1.6 billion for antiviolence programs, many of which are in areas that Congress was otherwise cutting back: legal services and housing. Funding of legal services allows victims to get child support so they don't have to choose between food for their children and staying in an abusive relationship. And the availability of safe housing is absolutely critical to reducing violence--to leave their abusers, women must have somewhere else to go.

Although it's impossible to gauge VAWA's precise impact, the number of reported domestic violence incidents has dropped by as much as 25 percent since the law was passed. Domestic violence homicides are also down. The number of women who kill their intimate partners has declined even more sharply than the number of men killing women. Many advocates attribute this directly to the increased availability of shelter--when given other choices, battered women are less likely to see killing their abusers as the only way out.

But all that is about to come to a grinding halt. VAWA expires on October 1. If it's not reauthorized before Congress breaks for elections at the end of September, hundreds of critical programs across the country will be shut down.

It doesn't have to be this way. VAWA has been a popular law. Reauthorization bills--at increased funding levels--have garnered significant support in Congress every year since 1998, but each time a handful of intransigent legislators has managed to bury them. Although this year's version of the law would keep funding levels about where they were in 1994, it would maintain current programs and allocate millions of dollars for much needed Section 8 federally subsidized housing vouchers and new supervised child-visitation sites. VAWA 2000 also rolls back some of the most punitive aspects of the 1996 anti-immigration law as it relates to domestic violence victims. But when VAWA was scheduled to come to the floor in July, two unnamed Republican senators refused to release the bill from the cloakroom, while in the House, Pennsylvania Republican William Goodling used a parliamentary trick to prevent it from coming to a vote. The rationale, advocates for domestic violence victims believe, was to deprive the Democrats of a rallying point for widening the already gaping gender gap during the conventions. It is not hyperbole to say that if VAWA's enemies prevail, women will pay the price--with their lives.

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